Items tagged with Work

Employers typically frown on workers surfing the cyber highway when they should be working, but as long as it's in moderation, they may want to lighten up. A new study shows that browsing the Web from work actually rejuvenates employees and makes them more productive. Don J. Q. Chen and Vivien K.G. Lim of the National University of Singapore presented the eye-opening findings in their "Impact of Cyberloafing on Psychological Engagement," according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The study went like this: First, the researchers took 96 undergraduate management students and split them up...Read more...

When you think of Apple's iPad, you probably think of a large iPod touch, or maybe a portable e-mail machine for your couch. Or maybe you think of something that you'd love to have if it only supported Flash and Hulu. Or maybe you think it'd be a great replacement for a netbook. But would you consider it seriously for work? That's the question that a Sybase survey recently asked, and evidently more people than not consider that the iPad would be useful for helping them to get work done. That's sort of amazing to us; one of the biggest issues we saw on the iPad was the inability to multi-task, despite...Read more...

For the business traveler (and the traveler in general, really), Wi-Fi is important -- crucial, even. But more important than sustenance? That's exactly what was found in a recent survey by American Airlines and HP, where some 47% of business travelers responded that Wi-Fi was the "most important airport amenity, outscoring basic travels needs such as food by nearly 30 percentage points." The online study gathered results from 1,500 frequent travelers who log more than 20 trips a year on three or more airlines, and it also found that the largest complaint wasn't delayed flights, cramped areas,...Read more...

BOLD NEW DELL (PRODUCT)RED ARTWORK FOR STUDIO LAPTOPS EXPRESS PASSION FOR ART, DESIRE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE Dell expands the palette of its Art House series with three exclusive (PRODUCT)RED designs Dell spotlights (RED)-inspired artists and their visions in global gallery on Dell.com For each Dell (PRODUCT)RED design purchased , Dell will contribute $20 to the Global Fund, helping to save lives and eliminate AIDS in Africa ROUND ROCK, Texas, Nov. 11, 2008 –Dell continues to celebrate a season of design and discovery with the unveiling of the (PRODUCT)RED artwork for the Dell Studio...Read more...

T-Mobile sure isn’t wasting any time: The G1 has only officially been available in stores for just a few hours, and the company is already talking about an update, albeit a small one.Users who purchased via pre-sale should start seeing a notification alerting you to the availability of the over-the-air update tomorrow, with other users getting it around the 31st. People who receive their device after these dates should get it within 2-3 days of activating their phones, and new phones will come preloaded with the update. If you’re one of the unlucky soles who doesn’t get it right away, T-Mobile...Read more...

In an interview with Laptop, ASUS' CEO, Jerry Shen, confirmed that ASUS will introduce a new Eee PC sometime in the second half of 2009 that will have a touch screen and run Windows 7. Given that Microsoft has said it plans general availability of the new operating system around January 2010, there’s a bit of a discrepancy here. Promising more details in the first quarter of next year (we’re guessing CES), Shen also indicated that the company doesn’t plan on putting Vista on any of the Eee PCs.Other noteworthy snippets from the interview: The company has sold four million Eee PCs to date....Read more...

Besides being a low-ranking Marvel Comics super-villain, Trapster is a free application that went live on the App Store last Friday, allowing users to share information real-time on speed traps.Besides the iPhone (naturally the highest-profile device in the bunch), the app runs on GPS devices like Garmin and TomTom, as well as on smartphones such including Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia S60 and N95 and other Java/J2ME phones. How does it work? You click on button in the app or call a toll-free number to report a speed trap. Other user's phones will alert them as they approach the...Read more...

When you think of a high-powered graphics workstation, the first thing which typically comes to mind is a huge, bulky tower chassis, packed to the brim with multiple processors, high-end graphics cards, and multiple hard disks. For the most part, this assumption is still fairly accurate, as these are the components which designers and artists usually require, and they aren't available anywhere else. Thus, artists have more or less been chained to their desks and their big, perfectly calibrated monitors. This isn't to say that there aren't options for the mobile workstation user, however, they...Read more...

Since RealNetworks announced RealDVD (available today, if you are interested), it was obviously there would probably be some kind of legal action. After all, the product rips DVDs to your hard drive, though it purports to not just maintain the original DRM but in fact adds another layer of protection. Still, most would probably have expected the lawsuit to come from the other direction.Shortly after releasing the RealDVD product today (about an hour or so!) RealNetworks announced a lawsuit against a host of companies: the DVD Copy Control Association, Inc., Disney Enterprises, Inc., Paramount...Read more...

NVIDIA Announces Workforce Reduction SANTA CLARA, CA - SEPTEMBER 18, 2008 - NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) today announced a workforce reduction to allow for continued investment in strategic growth areas. As a result, NVIDIA expects to eliminate approximately 360 positions worldwide, or about 6.5 percent of the Company’s global workforce. The reduction is expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2009 ending October 26, 2008. NVIDIA will provide employees affected by this reduction with severance packages, counseling, and job placement services."Our action today is...Read more...

Scientists in Pisa, Italy claim to have set a new world record for the fastest wireless data transmission. They report that during an uninterrupted 12-hour experiment, they were able to achieve throughput speeds above 1.2 Terabits per second; which they say beats the previous wireless data transmission speed record of 160 Gigabits per second by Korean scientists. The researchers claim that speeds of this magnitude can typically only be achieved using fiber optics. The technology that the Pisa scientists utilized to achieve such high bandwidth, actually shares a significant similarity with fiber...Read more...

If you think the contents of your work computer are your business and only your business, then think again. Applying federal rulings from other jurisdictions to help guide its ruling, the New Jersey State Appeals Court ruled in a recent case that "an employee has no reasonable expectation of privacy in personal files stored on a company-owned computer." This is a significant finding as it sets a precedent for the state of New Jersey, and adds to other similar rulings from the 4th and 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (U.S. v. Angevine and U.S. v. Simons, respectively). In fact, not only did the...Read more...

A recent survey of IT professionals reveals that just under half of them (45 percent) were either "not confident or only slightly confident" that they were aware of all the endpoints connecting to their organizations' networks. Perhaps not surprisingly, half of the respondents were also concerned that a security breach on their organizations' networks could jeopardize their employment or that of some of their staff. The study was sponsored by Mirage Networks, a Network Access Control (NAC) provider, and included "194 respondents, representing a variety of IT functions and companies that ranged...Read more...

There are some people whose opinions matter more than others. Take Vint Cerf, for instance. Cerf is often credited as being the "father of the Internet." While that might not be a technically accurate statement, it is safe to say that he played a very significant role in shaping what would become the Internet as we know it today--and he is certainly one of only about a half dozen people or so who can potentially even lay claim to that title. In his current role as Vice President and Internet Evangelist for one of the most important Internet companies presently doing business--Google--his opinion...Read more...